Hulu HD

Thanks to the efficient compression of the H.264 video codec, that day may be coming sooner than anticipated. Today we’re excited to launch an HD Gallery featuring a selection of High Definition video clips at 1280 x 720 resolution.

Now, the HD Gallery (sponsored by Intel), only feature a few movie trailers right now (including Jumper, Hitman, 27 Dresses, American Gangster, Definitely Maybe, and Alvin and the Chipmunks).

The content is not what’s exciting about this, obviously. What is exciting about it, though, is that this is clearly the way of the future. The videos start at a moment’s notice. No more waiting for the buffer to fill up in Quicktime. The video quality is quite stunning, too.

ABC has been doing HD for a while already, of course, but with relatively proprietary software, not using Flash. Flash, given its wide market reach, might just make HD video the baseline.

Sadly the HD videos, unlike other Hulu content, can’t be embedded (yet?). Hulu is a bit protective about its bandwidth, it seems.